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Pakistan: How a murder was spun into ‘stoning to death’ story

Crescent International

Pakistani media outlets have sold themselves for a few dollars to run down Islam and Pakistan as the tragic murder of Farzana Parveen shows. What was a cold blooded murder by the family has been turned into 'stoning to death' story to please the media's Islam-hating Western masters. Once the truth is established, the media outlets, anchors and their owners ought to be brought before the court and given exemplary punishment for spreading lies.

Lahore, Crescent-online
Friday June 6, 2014, 17:39 DST

The tragically criminal murder of a woman late last month (May 27) in Pakistan by a mob that included her own family members has been spun into “stoning to death” by the Pakistani media.

Let us get the basic facts straight. Farzana Parveen, a 25-year-old woman married a man against the wishes of her family. This was her second husband, Iqbal who is 45 years old. Farzana was pregnant at the time of her brutal murder. It was also Iqbal’s second marriage, having killed his first wife because he was madly in love with Farzana. The two eloped from the village to get married.

Where, when and how the murder took place must be clearly established. It occurred around 7.40 am on May 27, when two small mobs, each consisting of ten to fifteen people (men and women), clashed with each other near the Lahore High Court building.

These two rival mobs, one with Farzana and her second husband and the other with her family and her first husband were coming from their respective lawyers’ chambers walking towards the High Court. One of Farzana’s brothers (reportedly Ghulam Ali) was in possession of a .30 caliber pistol.

Farzana’s family had come with the firm intention to kill her and perhaps her lover-husband as well. As the rival mobs started to challenge each other, in shouts and abusive provocations as is typical of Pakistani society, and were getting into fist fights, Farzana’s brother took out his gun and shot her in the leg.

As the melee got underway, an off-duty Police Sub-Inspector, Arif (travelling from Sialkot to record a statement in the Lahore High Court in another case), happened to be nearby, intervened and snatched the gun from Ghulam Ali’s hand. He became part of the scuffle between several men.

It was during that scuffle that other men–probably the father, brother and cousins of Farzana– got hold of bricks from a nearby construction site and started hurling them at the opposing mob. Since their target was Farzana, several bricks hit her on the head, killing her.

The entire tragic episode lasted no more than two to three minutes.

While technically speaking, it is true that Farzana was brutally killed by her family using bricks as a “murder weapon”, it is a far cry from calling it “stoning to death.” Yet this is how the Pakistani media framed it and the ever-eager Western media waiting to denigrate Islam in any way, pounced on it.

Let us examine how the Pakistani media and their foreign sponsors spun this tragic episode.

They immediately dubbed it, “stoning to death”; “inside the Lahore High Court” and while the “police watched as spectators.”

What these emotionally loaded phrases indicate is that perhaps the poor woman was sentenced to death by the Lahore High Court that then organized her stoning while the police watched as spectators.

Horrible as the crime was—murder of a woman—the manner in which the story has been spun clearly points to ulterior motives on the part of the purveyors of falsehood against Islam and Pakistan.

The Pakistani government is grossly incompetent and has failed at every level in fulfilling its functions but to blame it for such tragedies is beneath contempt. Equally criminal is to lay the blame for this tragedy on Islam.

The media line further suggests that it was perhaps the Lahore High Court that sentenced the woman to be stoned to death. That is why the police stood by as “spectators”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Farzana was heading for a court appearance—third since her marriage to Iqbal—to determine whether she had committed a crime by eloping with her lover by abandoning her first husband. What were the circumstances in which she eloped? Was her first marriage dissolved because under Islamic law, a woman cannot be married to two husbands simultaneously? This is what was being determined by the Lahore High Court.

CNN in its report on June 3 said the following: “Shortly after her [Farzana’s] death, police arrested five people, including her father, her uncle, two cousins and the driver who brought the relatives to Lahore.” This number has now increased to 12 persons including Iqbal, her lover-husband.

He was quote by CNN as saying that Farzana’s family “demanded $1000 not to kill the woman.”

Equally important is the fact that Pakistani media outlets have all sold themselves to foreign masters, mainly American, Israeli and Indian. The notorious Geo TV’s largest shareholders are Indian businessmen. It has also received more than $60 million from the US. Is the US really interested in a free and fair media in Pakistan or is it buying media outlets to push the American/Western agenda?

Geo has gained notoriety for promoting Western filth and denigrating Islam in Pakistan. Unfortunately this is also the case with most other media outlets in the country that is in the grip of a tiny secular minority that lives a rapacious lifestyle and displays virulent hatred of Islam.

Sad and tragic episodes like those of Farzana Parveen provide them an opportunity to run Islam down.

Just for the record, equally heinous crimes against young children—gang rape of young boys and girls in Punjab have been widely reported in the Pakistani media throughout the month of May—yet there has been little or no reaction from the same media or the parasitical elite whatsoever.

Why the two different reactions? Is it because children’s rape is less exciting than projecting a story of a woman being “stoned to death”, even if there is little truth to it? Further, only by claiming that women are being “mistreated” by Islam can Western bakhsheesh be forthcoming.

END


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